Night Driving: Notes from a Prodigal Soul

Eerdmans Summary

Journeys that begin in brokenness rarely follow a straight road to healing. There are twists and turns—and setbacks—on the path of repentance.

Night Driving tells the story of a pastor and seminary professor whose moral failures destroyed his marriage and career, left his life in ruins, and sent him spiraling into a decade-long struggle against God. Forced to fight the demons of his past in the cab of the semi-truck he drove at night through the Texas oil fields, Chad Bird slowly began to limp toward grace and healing.

Drawing on his expertise as an Old Testament scholar, Bird weaves together his own story, the biblical story, and the stories of fellow prodigals as he peels back the layers of denial, anger, addiction, and grief to help listeners come face-to-face both with their own identities and the God who can heal them.

Praise for Night Driving

John Ortberg
— author of The Life You’ve Always Wanted
“It is not clear to me why God meets us uniquely in pain. It is only clear that he does. In Night Driving Chad Bird gives us an unsparing look at the desperate and unpretty human need for God through the lens of his own journey. We are shepherds of darkness and stewards of scars. If you’re having problems finding God in your life, you may find him here.”

Elyse Fitzpatrick
— author of Because He Loves Me
“All too infrequently, into our sweet and tidy churchiness, comes a book of such amazing transparency, hope, precision, beauty, and glorious messiness that it shakes us from our lethargic self-justification. . . . Chad’s book is just such a gem.”

Rod Rosenbladt
— cohost of the White Horse Inn radio show
“Most ‘tell-all’ books have a ‘self-atonement-by-confession’ scent, but not this one. Any and all ‘self’—particularly his own—the author shows is no more than idolatry. But the triune God specializes in giving life to crushed, despised, broken, dead people—me, you. And always through his incarnate, crucified Son. All for you, for me, for all—including the author.”